Hey Everyone! I have an opinion on Dapper Laughs, too!

Also, if you are trying to insult Dapper - fair enough - please bear in mind that using a word synonymous with the female reproductive system as an insult is counter-productive. I use 'bell-end,' 'rape apologist,' 'arse' (gender neutral!) or 'cock'. Suggesting that his persona's misogynist obsession with sexual conquest hides a fear of his own homosexual desire might work, but remember that being gay in itself is not a bad thing, and if Dapper and Eminem do come out, we ought to congratulate them.

Postcard Reviews? I'm Havin That

Skeletor on Ron Athey

Goodbye to Russell Brand

Sadly, the time has arrived when Russell Brand and I must part company. Rather than leave matters in the air - my rewrite of Parklife  and  Welcome to the Terrordome did go buck-wild on his ass, somewhat - I'd like to draw a conclusion that reflects not a dislike for Randy Brandy, but my more ambivalent feelings.

Having reached the end of Booky Wook 2 - which concludes with Russ in the arms of Katy Perry as the entire narrative suggested it would - my feelings have not changed about his attitude towards women. The final sequence, in which Russell attempts a threesome with two women he calls 'Curious' and 'Dusty' (the latter designation somewhat racist, in my humble opinion) affirms his commitment to objectification, and renews my concern that his current political posturing is founded on a type of egotism and sexism that is all too common in left wing politics.

In recent days, Brand has scored two palpable hits: a promise to give away his future earnings, and taking on the mockery of his statements by recording a version of Parklife. And despite the chorus of disapproval he has received - mainly on the grounds of hypocrisy - his political positions are valid and an important intervention in a media culture that has not challenged the lazy greed of the political classes. I want Brand to become what he thinks he is: a gadfly on the buttocks of representative democracy.

My hypocrisy is equally bad: I understand Brand's compulsive need for intimacy, and I am sure that I have used obnoxious language to make a satirical point. But I think the last thing that anarchism needs a big man shouting about his sexual conquests. 

I have struggled with how I would term Brand's behaviour. He is

clearly a sexist, since he gives less agency and identity to most of the women in his autobiography than to the men. I consider misogynist a powerful term, and only appropriate when it describes a system that encourages the marginalisation of women. Benny Hill, for example is sexist: the Catholic Church's exclusion of women from the priesthood is misogyny. 

I have made mistakes myself: I once accused a play of expressing supremacy. It was pointed out that the word is cognate with 'supremacist' and implies fascist sympathies. I didn't mean to say that - far from it - but the slippage of language's meaning insists that I can't defend my use of the word, because it was open to interpretation...

I am sorry I wrote that. 

So I don't want to call Brand a misogynist. But his description of his behaviour at the Edinburgh Fringe reads like a deliberate cultivation of an environment wherein women were reduced to a commodity. 

Obviously, I don't believe Booky Wook 2 is a true story - it's a myth about an entity called Russell and has a determined narrative arc of the hero's journey (it's like a celebrity mash-up version of The Odyssey), and I doubt many individual women have come to harm due to his antics. The hatred he inspires in The Daily Mail would have ensured a few more kiss-and-tell stories. They demonstrated that the spirit of investigative journalism still survives in the speed with which they attacked the 'feminist t-shirt' campaign. 

Anyway, I've had enough of him now. I'm sure Revolution will be in plenty of second-hand shops after Christmas, and then I shall look at his plan for changing humanity. But I need a break from the yabber, the occasional good line, the potential he suggests that he is far from fulfilling. He's like most performance art: a work in progress. 

Here's a video clip that sums him up for me. Kicks off with some zingers before descending into rambling. 

Not like me at all, then.

Ron Athey, dating and me

TUE 11 + WED 12 NOV, 7.30PM

THE ARCHES
253 ARGYLE STREET, GLASGOW G2 8DL
Tel 0141 565 1000
Tickets £15 (£10 conc)



The fourth installation in the Incorruptible Flesh series, “Messianic Remains”, is a solo performance commissioned by Performance Studies international, debuting at Stanford University in June 2013. Returning to the laid-in-state-sexualized corpse scene presented as a static image in [Dissociative Sparkle], the messianic impulse/prophecy is activated. Dressed in vestmental finery, a funeral procession draws its pulse from Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, and Athey arises from the viewing into a walking meditation. As in earlier works in the series, Athey rides the grandiose myth of enlightenment that only the face of death may reveal.

The concept of the Incorruptible Flesh series took form a year before the three-therapy HIV drug treatment would give hope by halting the numbers of AIDS deaths. In a research residence at the CCA Glasgow in February 1996, Athey and collaborator, Lawrence Steger studied the lives of saints, the relics and in particular, the display of the ‘incorruptible’ bodies, most of which are wax sculptures with a corpse inside. Applying the status of ‘incorruptible’ upon their own dying HIV+ bodies, Athey and Steger wove solo actions into interactions – including “The Trojan Whore” which Athey performed at the memorials for Leigh Bowery in 1998. 

 The final action in the piece contained the image of the living corpse on display: Athey laid out on a simple plank, tended to by Steger (with monstrous special affects makeup suggesting decomposing). The live AIDS body, on-display, anointed (greased), bathed in golden light marked the glorification of the live AIDS body, which in future performances in the series, “Dissociative Sparkle” and “Perpetual Wound”, became the more esoteric post-AIDS body. Lawrence Steger died in February 1999.

“Dissociative Sparkle” was performed in February 2006, exactly 10 years later, for the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow and was later repeated at Artists Space in NYC . Athey presented his first durational piece – a 6 hour solo performance. Honouring the anniversary of his collaboration with/and the loss of Steger, Athey used the static, martyred image of his body, suffering on a rack. The audience were allowed to take the role of Steger and anoint Athey’s body in grease. As in “The Trojan Whore”, the body was enhanced; tortured, but not vulnerable. Invaded by hooks, bat and rack, his skin was bronzed and shining, genitals inflated to grotesque size with medical saline.

For “Perpetual Wound”, 2007, Athey worked in collaboration with a younger artist, Dominic Johnson, and focused on this trans-generational relationship mythologically, characterizing Sophocles’ pairing of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus. Philoctetes (Athey), in exile for possessing a stinking weeping wound that would not heal, was seduced by Neoptolemus (Johnson) into returning to battle and directions to receive healing. This reality comes to fruition during the start of a dance, wherein a sheet of glass on a stand is used as a prophylaxis, protecting the younger man from the shared wound.